Building the ‘Capacity To Trade’ through Trade-Related Policy Reform: Towards Revising the Agreement on Agriculture and the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights
By Kristin Dawkins and Steve
Suppan
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
2105 First Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55404-2505, USA
3 September 1997
NGO Symposium on Trade-Related Issues the Affecting Least-Developed Countries (in Preparation for the WTO High Level Meeting on LDCs), 25-26 September 1997.
International Conference Centre – Geneva
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) is pleased to be invited to present its views to this Symposium in preparation for the High-Level Meeting on Integrated Initiatives for Least-Developed Countries’ Trade Development. IATP is further gratified that the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) have begun to co-operate to assist Least Developed Countries (LDCs), and facilitate the sort of vigorous interchange of ideas about globalization, trade and development most recently exhibited at the July 1997 session of the UN Economic and Social Council.1 We hope that holding this symposium and linking it thematically to the High Level Meeting is an indication of further movement towards a more transparent and democratic consultation and negotiation process at the WTO, as called for by many developing country governments and the Joint Non-Governmental Organization Statement at the Singapore Ministerial Conference.
Unfortunately, the 10 April 1997 meeting of the self-designated "Invisible Committee" of select WTO members, chaired by Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Jeffrey Lang, to plan the 1998 Ministerial, indicates that developing countries continue to be excluded from the WTO trade policy reform process. The U.S. paper on the Ministerial agenda calls for transparency in rules and operating procedures of countries whose governance the United States government wishes to change. The paper concludes by asking "[c]an we agree that preparations for this largely ceremonial Ministerial Conference [the 50th anniversary of the founding of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade] should be limited and designed not to interfere with the ongoing work of the WTO?" A more transparent Ministerial planning process and negotiations would allow developing countries and NGOs to participate fully in the "ongoing work of the WTO." Allowing NGO representatives to speak to the Ministerial Conference would follow the excellent precedent set by the United Nations General Assembly at its Earth Summit + 5 review, which allowed NGO representatives to address the Assembly for the first time on June 27.
Concrete results from Director General Renato Ruggiero’s promise in Singapore to explore how to "join more transparency with efficiency" in WTO agenda-setting cannot come too soon. The production of trade policy through "informal" meetings of a small fraction of WTO members may appear to be more "efficient" than the sometimes fractious and cumbersome process of democratic consultation. But if such "efficient" policy-making contributes to the ongoing deterioration of terms of trade for most developing countries, then it should come as no surprise when those who were excluded from substantive negotiations about their needs and policy proposals object to the results.
As a measure towards enhancing LDC "capacity to trade," we support the recommendation of the Joint NGO Statement at the Singapore Ministerial that "[a]ssistance should be provided to smaller and poor countries to enable them to set up adequate capacity in Geneva and in the capitals to formulate national positions on multilateral trade issues and to participate in negotiations in the WTO." Such assistance could be reckoned as part of the 0.7 % Official Development Assistance target to which all developed countries, except the USA, have committed themselves. We believe that a request for such assistance would be a small item on the LDC "wish list" to the WTO, among other items such as duty-free access for LDC exports or technology transfer programs for LDCS. The costs of not funding such assistance are far greater than the burgeoning costs of marginalizing developing countries in the WTO trade policy reform process. This is particularly true if inadequate capacity to trade results in situations requiring extremely expensive humanitarian and/or peace-keeping interventions.
Let us consider the possibility that liberalized agricultural trade and trade policy implementation have not contributed to increased food security. (Evidently, many causes of food insecurity are not directly related to trade policy, but it is striking how many papers in conferences on food security policy are also devoted to trade policy.) Numerous NGO studies have suggested that the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) rules are directly contributing to declining incomes and increased food insecurity, e.g. among corn farmers in the Philippines who are unable to compete with corn imports whose various forms of subsidies are allowed under the Uruguay Round (UR) "Green Box" of permitted support. Such studies are often ignored or dismissed by governments and agribusinesses, which are disposed to attribute decreases in food security to almost anything but multilateral trade rules and their implementation. If NGO studies on trade and food security are dismissed, and yet food security declines despite increased volumes of agricultural trade, where are we to study the causes of and debate solutions to food insecurity among large sectors of national and global populations?
What is the feasibility of getting U.S. and other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries’ support at the WTO Ministerial in 1998 to give the same urgency to the study of trade and food security as is given to the study of trade and environment? We believe that establishing a Working Group (WG) for Trade and Food Security would provide a useful forum for analyzing trade rules towards increasing the food security of LDCs, thereby improving their "capacity to trade," not least by reducing demand on their extremely scarce foreign exchange. NGOs and governments that believe a WG for Trade and Food Security would provide a forum for study of their concerns may find it none too soon to begin making the case for the Working Group at the second Ministerial.
Let us consider the work of a WG for Trade and Food Security in terms of the assumptions about institutional competencies and complementarity of competencies in the Committee on Trade and Development’s November 1996 report to the General Council. The report states that the "CTD attached considerable priority to drafting the Guidelines for WTO Technical Cooperation" under the assumption, among others, that "there was a need to remove any unnecessary overlap with the technical cooperation programmes of relevant international organizations and to ensure that recipient countries benefit from the complementary nature of their respective competencies."
One objection to establishing a WG on Trade and Food Security is that its work will merely replicate that of existing WTO committees or of other organizations. After a review of existing institutional arrangements, we do not think that such an objection can be sustained. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Committee on World Food Security does much fine work in the areas of technical assistance, such as its Special Programme for Food Security and its commodity production analysis of the global food security situation. However, the Committee does not analyze food security in terms of trade policy formulation and implementation. Similarly FAO commodity and trade studies, such as its "Impact of the Uruguay Round on Agriculture," report on commodity production, import and export projections, but do so without reference to other trade-related dimensions of food security, such as the impact of exports and export rules on producer operations or the impact of trade-related structural adjustment on consumer food budgets. We believe that communications invited by or studies commissioned by a WG on Trade and Food Security would not only contribute to LDCs "capacity to trade," but would call upon the LDCs to develop a capacity to assess their food security needs and impacts of trade and trade policy upon their food security and balance of payments situations.
Another possible objection to establishing a WG Trade and Food Security is that it would replicate the work of the WTO Committee on Agriculture (CoA). The function of the CoA in closest proximity to the nexus of trade and food security is its oversight role in deciding whether or not to implement the Marrakesh Ministerial Decision Concerning the Possible Negative Effects on the Reform Programme on Least-Developed and Net Food Importing Developing Countries. The CoA recognized that "important areas of action provided for within the framework of the Decision are matters within the competence or operational responsibility of other international organizations" and hence invited several international organizations, including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and FAO to contribute testimony as to whether any or all measures of the Marrakesh Decision should be implemented. Despite the sharp increase in the food importing bills of Low Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDCs) and despite a fall in food aid that has alarmed LIFDCs, NGOs and the grain trade press itself, the CoA decided not to implement the Marrakesh Decision, instead encouraging LIFDCs to borrow from existing International Financial Institution (IFI) facilities and to make use of developed country aid to improve agricultural production and infrastructure. Secretary Ruggiero’s diplomatic initiatives in favor of implementation non-withstanding, the 28 October 1996 CoA report for the Singapore Ministerial agreed with IMF and World Bank testimony that there was no need to implement the Marrakesh Decision.
The Food Aid Convention (FAC), in its advisory role to the CoA, does not have a mandate to analyze the relation between trade and food security, nor would the sudden granting of a mandate confer the needed history of experience in food security analysis to effectively carry out such a mandate. Discussions toward revising the FAC in 1998, under the auspices of the International Grains Council (IGC), acknowledge the work of the World Food Summit in establishing that "both donors and recipients [to FAC] are increasingly approaching the problem of hunger in terms of a broader concept of food security." However, such acknowledgment has brought neither a significant increase in the amount of food aid nor a food security analysis of trade policy-related causes of the need for such aid, despite the IGC Executive Director’s concern that the [Marrakesh Decision’s] concept of compensation may not be very appropriate for assessing food aid needs." Next year’s FAC negotiations may result in a "review of the principles of surplus disposal and the consultative obligations" between FAC donors and beneficiaries, as called for by Anthony Hill, Ambassador of Jamaica to the WTO, and thus lead to more and more timely food aid for a greater number of countries. But as Ambassador Hill has also noted, beneficiaries are in a poor position to negotiate such principles and obligations.
Next year’s CoA review of the Marrakesh Decision may result in some multilateral assistance for LIFDCs, as called for by NGOs at a food security seminar in March 1997 in Aachen, Germany. However, given the predisposition of developed country members of the WTO and IFIs to declare the Uruguay Round a success for all parties prior to any systematic study of the impacts of each schedule of commitments, perhaps the CoA will continue non-implementation of the Marrakesh Decision in the foreseeable future. How can we respond to the view that IFI analytic frameworks and the CoA notification requirements are such that it will be impossible to distinguish the effects of the Uruguay Round from other factors influencing world prices and supplies, and hence demonstrate the need to implement the Marrakesh Decision? The Aachen seminar concluded that "[t]he implementation of the Marrakesh Decision should not be tied solely to the proof that price increases and the inadequacy of the availability in the supply of basic foodstuffs are directly linked to the reform process of the WTO Agreement. Instead, all parties involved should take a much broader angle of vision of the problem and view the commitment in the perspective of improving global food security."
In order for the multilateral system to organize a "broader angle of vision" towards integrated initiatives on food security—rather than simply projecting price changes for a few commodity imports with or without the UR—it is necessary to have a forum. We believe that a WG on Trade and Food Security would provide such a forum. A discussion of the WG’s programme could be a subject of a thematic roundtable of the High-Level Meeting in October, under the rubric of "trade related policy reform." The WG might report to the Committee on Trade and Development, since food security is undeniably a vital component of development. This NGO Symposium may wish to discuss how NGOs could contribute to designing the WG’s programme, and thus accelerate the frequency and depth of NGO interaction with the WTO’s committee structure.
At the same time, it is essential that such a working group address food security issues more widely than their impact in LDCs alone. Very important indicators, such as food security, can be at LDC levels even in relatively developed countries. For instance, agricultural trade liberalization under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and increased agricultural trade has certainly not brought greater food security to Mexico—which is now a member of OECD.
Ironically, the U.S. cites food security as the justification for introducing new issues in the next WTO agricultural negotiations, including further protections for patent holders of agricultural biotechnology. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, in a speech to the International Grains Council on June 19, 1997, under the section of the speech titled "Biotechnology," stated "[at] its heart, freer agricultural trade is about feeding the world." He then contended that only through trade in genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could the world be fed. In a July 8 speech to the Commodities Club, Secretary Glickman characterized overcoming resistance to the patenting of life forms and to trade in GMOs as "the battle royale of 21st century agriculture." Secretary Glickman’s speeches are part of a diplomatic offensive to force the EU (and other countries) to accept imports of GMOs, backed by the ever-present threat of WTO and U.S. unilateral trade sanctions. The sources of the controversy are numerous, but include: 1) the legitimacy of the "hard" science norms of the Uruguay Round Agreement as the only norms for judging "equivalency" between different health and environment standards concerning trade in foods; and 2) the authority of the industry-dominated Codex Alimentarius to develop procedures for operationalizing "equivalency" as the norm in disputes over sanitary and phytosanitary matters. Food processors and consumers in the EU have reacted negatively to trade in GMOs, so transnational public relations firms have received large contracts to help educate consumers about the alleged benefits of GMOs. In addition, the U.S. government seeks to "feed the world" by disseminating a Second Green Revolution of agri-biotechnology through such programs as the U.S. Aid for International Development Agency’s African Food Security Initiative for "Ethiopia, Mali, Uganda, Malawi and Mozambique—whose governments have begun policy and structural reforms"—or the "African Growth and Opportunity Act," which received the support of Cargill chairman, Ernest S. Micek. U.S. NGOs have testified against exclusive reliance on the "trade not aid" approach of U.S. government initiatives in Africa, but thus far with little effect.
Another controversial trade policy alleged to improve food security is the patenting in the U.S. and E.U. of genetic resources, most often obtained from developing countries through bioprospecting. Multilateral policy governing this trade is largely vested in the CBD which is now developing protocols concerning access to, conservation of and sustainable use of genetic resources and the equitable distribution of benefits from products developed from plant genetic resources long cultivated by local and indigenous communities. Such resources, whose economically and juridically equitable development could enrich many LDCs, are the collectively cultivated basis for much subsequent invention, including that claimed by the filing of patents for computer generated DNA sequences of germplasm to develop GMO products.
As this characterization of trade-related biodiversity issues may suggest, "today’s debates [on biodiversity] have become part of the official North-South conflict and refer more to transfer of biotechnologies and restrictions on access to genetic resources than to the nitty-gritty of protecting natural ecosystems and biodiversity." It is in this spirit that the UR TRIPs Agreement promotes patenting, to the advantage of transnational biotechnological agribusiness. To build LDC "capacity for trade," as an alternative, developing countries may wish to draft national laws to promote the sustainable development of their genetic resources under the sui generis provision of TRIPs. First, here is a little background on what the U.S. is doing to pre-empt such national legislation, by pressuring developing countries to conform to the U.S. interpretation of TRIPs well in advance of the mandated schedule.
Despite the WTO’s lack of systematic study of the impacts of the Uruguay Round, the U.S. is trying to persuade many developing countries to give up the phase-in-periods intended to give them time to adjust to the new trade liberalization regime. Indeed, the trade ministers of the United States, Japan, the European Union and Canada, at their 27-28 September 1996 meeting in Seattle, called on all non-Least Developed Countries to surrender their hard-fought phase-in periods, such as the 10-year phase in period for the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement. According to the summary of the Quad meeting by the U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barchefsky, "[I]t is incumbent upon those who have reaped the benefits of the multilateral system to more rapidly assume their full obligations to the rules, commensurate with their role in the global economy." (Furthermore, as was the case during the Uruguay Round, developing countries are called upon to assume new obligations in advance of any study of the impacts that such obligations would have. For example, in WTO negotiations on financial services, the U.S. is pressuring developing countries to assume new obligations and give up legal protections to their national financial institutions, protections required in the U.S. by U.S. law.)
The U.S. has warned at least one developing country that its national legislation to draft a sui generis regime for the protection of their plant genetic resources, allowed under Article 27, para 3b may already violate TRIPs—many years before the phase-in period would elapse. Two cases exemplify some U.S. initiatives to promote a de facto, if not de jure, surrender of the phase-in periods guaranteed under Articles 65 and 66 of the TRIPs Agreement.
First, on 21 April 1997, First Secretary Robert A. Pollard of the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand wrote to Director-General Banphot of the Royal Thai Government that "Washington agencies recently learned that the Royal Thai Government (RTG) has drafted a bill that would allow Thai healers to register traditional medicines in order to claim benefits before Thailand ratifies the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity and for use when researchers seek access to these medicinal resources in the future. Since Washington believes that such a registration system could constitute a possible violation of TRIPs and hamper medical research into these compounds, the U.S. Government seeks further information on the Thai proposed registration system." Pollard then requested the Director send him a copy of the draft bill and respond to a series of questions about it. More than two hundred NGOs and individuals from dozens of countries around the world signed a 30 June letter to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to protest this intervention in Thai domestic legislation. Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, responding on behalf of Secretary Albright, replied to the NGOs on July 23 that "[d]ialogue with other governments concerning their fulfillment of international obligations is not ‘intervention.’ Rather, it is part of the normal day to day exchange of information that ensures that governments thoroughly consider the implications of policy decisions on their international obligations." We leave it to the "other governments" to evaluate this response, noting however the tendency of "Washington agencies" to use their influence with IFIs to further condition other countries’ macro-economic stabilization agreements with the IMF.
A second case concerns recent U.S. attempts to force the Congress of Ecuador to approve a Bilateral Agreement on Intellectual Property Rights or face trade sanctions under U.S. Section 301 legislation. As a condition of accepting the credentials of Ecuador’s new ambassador to the United States, President Fabiám Alarcon is pressuring the Ecuadorian Congress to approve the agreement. The pressure on the Ecuadorian Congress to ratify the agreement, negotiated prior to the signing of the UR Agreement, is immense, particularly given the precedent in April 1997 of the U.S. reimposition of import duties on $260 million of Argentine exports in retaliation for Argentine refusal to rewrite its patent legislation in a way judged by the U.S. to be adequate. Ecuadorian NGOs have told us that never has the U.S. so overtly threatened the Ecuadorian government and society as over this issue. Seven Ecuadorian indigenous groups belonging to the eight nation Council of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) have strongly opposed ratification of the Bilateral Agreement, fearing that ratification will legitimize current practices of U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies taking traditional indigenous medicines without permission, patenting them and reaping the benefits of those patents. COICA argues that patent and intellectual property agreements should be negotiated on a regional basis, rather than bilaterally. According to a quasi-legal interpretation of TRIPs and the CBD, allegedly authored by the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador, ratification will enable small farmers to be competitive by adopting patented agri-biotechnology, and will enable consumers to pay less in the long run for patented medicines and GMO foodstuffs. This contention is speculative in the extreme.
The TRIPs Agreement allows Members to "exclude from patentability inventions, the prevention within their territory of the commercial exploitation of which is necessary to protect ordre public or morality, including to protect human, animal or plant life or health or to avoid serious prejudice to the environment, provided that such exclusion is not made merely because the exploitation is prohibited by domestic law." (Article 27, para. 2). The proviso implies that such exclusions would have to be justified under international law, and leaves open the question as to how differences in international legal regimes are to be adjudicated, if at all. However the Agreement allows Members to "provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof. The provisions of this sub-paragraph shall be reviewed four years after the entry into force of the Agreement establishing the MTO" (Article 27, para. 3b)—that is, in 1999.
By contrast, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Article 15, Access to Genetic Resources, begins by "[r]ecognizing the sovereign rights of States over their natural resources, [hence] the authority to determine access to genetic resources rests with the national governments and is subject to national legislation" (para. 1). However, as we have seen from the examples of Ecuador and Thailand, the sovereignty of national legislation is subject to erosion through diplomatic pressure. Furthermore, as we argue below, the trade sanction power of the WTO allows for protection of biotechnological patents, while the CBD’s lack of sanctions leave biodiversity at the mercy of bio-prospectors, mostly transnational corporations or persons collecting genetic resources or knowledge about resources for those corporations. Hence the potential power of a sui generis regime under a revised TRIPs agreement could benefit the developing countries whose genetic resources and knowledge about resources are the object of commercial exploitation, if illicit exploitation of genetic resources is subject to trade sanctions.
The range of controversy over the viability of sui generis regimes runs the gamut from denying that biodiversity and plant genetic resources can be protected effectively under a sui generis regime to projects to develop a system of "biotrade" in genetic resources under the existing TRIPs regime. Rather than presume to review the merits of these poles of debate, what follows is an exploration of the middle ground between denying the possibilities of sui generis regimes and simply accepting TRIPs as it is. This middle ground concerns what has been termed "the movement for collective intellectual rights" (CIRs) to govern the economically equitable and environmentally sustainable development of genetic resources and knowledge about such resources. The underlying assumption of CIRs is that "indigenous communities need to be protected from (emphasis in original) commodization of their knowledge and their resources." The need for such protection is writ large in the history of unremunerated and illegal appropriation of indigenous and community knowledge and genetic resources, as has been massively documented by CIR researchers.
The CBD, though admirable in many ways, at present lacks the one essential power necessary to protect communities from commodization of their knowledge and resources—effective sanctions. Such sanctions the WTO has in abundance. Indeed, the WTO could end up generating a surfeit of sanctions, given the spiraling number of TRIPs disputes that are likely to occur without a revision of TRIPs towards economically equitable and sustainable development. However, no power of sanction, no matter how absolute, can recuperate the loss of biodiversity that, despite admittedly inexact benchmarks, is generally conceded to be occurring at an accelerating rate. The scientific Achilles heel of the biotechnology industry, that the plant protection provisions of TRIPs can only shield against in the short run, is the genetic reductionism, to say nothing of patent stacking, on which biotechnology depends. Such reductionism, necessary for the development of GMO products, can be and has been detrimental to conserving biodiversity, since "[b]iodiversity cannot be properly understood without due consideration of its dynamics in communities and ecosystems. Interactions among species play an essential role in the generation and maintenance of biodiversity." While agricultural biotechnology companies are attempting to offset the reduction of biodiversity inherent in GMO products through such means as Pest Resistance Management (PRM) programs, even an official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture has characterized the state of PRM knowledge as "experimental," despite the approval and even deregulation of some GMO products for commercial exploitation, supported by all the armaments of U.S. diplomacy.
In view of the CBD’s lack of sanctioning power and in view of the WTO’s acknowledged lack of competence in environmental matters, which would include the loss of biodiversity, LDCs might consider requesting from the High Level Meeting financial and technical assistance to draft a sui generis system, per Article 67 of TRIPs and in accord with the purpose of developing a "technologically viable base" (Article 66, para. 1) and the "capacity to trade." Furthermore, to carry out Article 27, para.s 2-3 of the TRIPs Agreement, LDCs might request that the WTO Ministerial Conference grant the Secretariat of the CBD formal consultative status to the Council on TRIPs on matters within CBD competence, while conserving the autonomy and prerogatives of the CBD.
There is at least one fundamental impediment in the existing TRIPs Agreement that must be modified in order to permit the revision of TRIPs towards sui generis regimes protecting CIRs. The character of the term "patent owner" is not defined in TRIPs, but the de facto status is that most patents are owned by corporations, collective entities, which through an 1886 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, are considered "natural persons" accruing all the protections of and privileges accorded by the U.S. Constitution. This 1886 ruling remains U.S. law, and may have influenced the juridical definition of corporations and their privileges elsewhere. However, in most countries, the legal privileges and protections granted corporations as natural persons are not granted to such collective entities as indigenous peoples or farming communities attempting to assert their intellectual rights. The term of "patent owner" in TRIPs must be revised to protect all de facto collective rights holders equally—whether corporations, indigenous groups or others—as a first step towards enabling nationally legislated CIRs as sui generis regimes consistent with TRIPs.
In conclusion, and in addition to the continued, serious, concern that the WTO process be more transparent and better integrated into other areas of multilateral negotiation, our four principal recommendations to promote "capacity to trade" are:
On behalf of the Institute and its partner organizations around the world, we thank you for this opportunity to share our views with you concerning the High Level Meeting and ways in which the Agreement on Agriculture and the TRIPs Agreement might be revised to the benefit of all the countries now merely presumed to be benefiting from the flawed Uruguay Round Agreement.
Endnotes
1 "ECOSOC Debate Provides CAT-Scan of Views on Globalization but Picture is Blurred" in "Agreed Conclusions," INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTS REVIEW, (Vol. 8, No. 28-29, 31 July 1997), 1-7.
2 "Senior Officials Seek to Develop WTO Agenda Through 1998 Ministerial," and "U.S. Paper on WTO Agenda," INSIDE US TRADE, April 18, 1997.
3 Martin Khor, "Salute to the grassroots fighters of sustainable development," THIRD WORLD RESURGENCE (July 1997), 13-15.
4 Khor, "Reform of WTO functioning on the agenda?" THIRD WORLD ECONOMICS (No. 154, 1-15 February 1997), 16.
5 "Joint NGO Statement on Issues and Proposals for the WTO Ministerial Conference," (Singapore: December 1996), para. 81.
6 e.g. See the contributions to and bibliography for "Food Security Policy: Long Term Perspectives," European Commission: Solagral (Brussels, 1-3 April 1996).
7 "Trade Liberalization as a threat to livlihood: the corn sector in the Philippines," Oxfam-United Kingdom, December 1996.
8 WTO Committee on Trade and Development: "Report (1996) of the Committee on Trade and Development to the General Council," (4 November 1996), 3.
9 "Impact of the Uruguay Round on Agriculture," Commodity and Trade Division, Food and Agriculture Organization." http://www.fao.org/
10 "Report by the Committee on Agriculture on the Marrakesh Ministerial Decision on Measures Concerning the Possible Negative Effects of the Reform Programme on Least-Developed and Net Food Importing Developing Countries," World Trade Organization, G/L/125 (24 October 1997), para 8.
11 Mark Friedberg and Marcelle Thomas, "The 1990's Global Grain Situation and its Impact on the Food Security of Selected Developing Countries," Trade and Macroeconomics Division Discussion Paper, No. 16, International Food Policy Research Institute, February 1997. The data of this study is useful, but the analysis, particularly of the Philippine rice markets, is inadequately researched.
12 Gary Gardner, "Food Aid Falls Sharply," Vital Signs 1997, ed. Lester R. Brown et al. (Washington, DC: World Watch Institute, 1997), 110-111, and "Role of food aid shrinks to an irreducible level," MILLING AND BAKING NEWS, January 14, 1997.
13 "Report by the Committee on Agriculture on the Marrakesh Ministerial Decision ..." para. 18.
14 Renato Ruggiero, "Building Bridges to Trade," address to the Trade and Development Board of UNCTAD, 8 October 1996, 4.
15 "Report by the Committee on Agriculture on the Marrakesh Ministerial Decision …" para. 18.
16 "Outcome of Recent IGC and FAC Meetings," press release, International Grains Council, 4 July 1997, and "WTO Agriculture Committee: Statement by IGC Executive Director," 27 June 1997.
17 "Chairman's Opening Remarks," FAC meeting with Recipient Countries, 17 June 1997.
18 G. Denis, "Grain Markets and Food Aid," European Symposium on Net Food-Importing Developing Countries (Aachen, Germany, 7 March 1997).
19 "Statements by Delegation of Jamaica" (sic), FAC meeting with food aid beneficiaries, 17 June 1997.
20 "NGO Follow-up on the Marrakesh Decision," Aachen, Germany, 1997.
21 The WTO Committee on Trade and Development's (CTD) August 1996 study indicates by its title that it is not such a country-by-country study: "Participation of Developing Countries in World Trade: Overview of Major Trends and Underlying Factors." (16 August 1996) WT/COMTD/W/15.
22 Penny Fowler, "The Marrakesh Decision: Honouring the Commitment to Net Food-Importing Developing Countries" (London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1996).
23 "NGO Follow-up on the Marrakesh Decision," 2-3.
24 This is the approach of Uwe Eiteljoerge and Clinton Shiells, "The Uruguay Round and Net Food Importers," IMF Working Paper (December 1995), WP/95/143.
25 James Cameron and Ross Ramsay, "Participation by Non-Governmental Organizations in the World Trade Organisation,) (No. 1, 1995) and Dan Esty, "Why the World Trade Organization Needs NGOs," (No. 15, 1996), Global Environment & Trade Study (GETS) Working Papers. GETS: [email protected] or fax: (1-203) 432-5373.
26 From January 1995 to June 1996, Mexican consumption of staple foods fell 29 percent, with the result that half of all Mexicans do not ingest the minimum daily calorie intake established by the World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization. According to a Mexican public health Institute, 158,000 children under the age of five die annually of malnutrition-related illnesses. In the analysis of Solon Baraclough, the proportion of undernourished children in Mexico is about the same as that of sub-Saharan African and southeast Asian countries with a tenth of Mexico's Gross Domestic Product, an orthodox measure of economic development. (El hambre no espera Foro Nacional por la Soberania Alimentaria (memoria básica) (Mexico City: 23-26 August, 1996, 14). Mexican food security has plummeted to LDC levels during the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) despite the increase in agriculture trade heralded by member governments and agribusiness as a sign of NAFTA's putative success (e.g. "U.S. Agricultural Export Experience with NAFTA Partners," PROMAR International (July 1997); "NAFTA: Year Three: A Report by the NAFTA Economic Monitoring Task Force" U.S. Department of Agriculture (Washington, DC, October, 1996) and "Study on the Operation and Effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement," (Washington, DC: The White House, July 14, 1997).
27 "New Task Force To Set U.S. Goals for WTO Agriculture Negotiations," INSIDE U.S. TRADE, June 27, 1997.
28 "Remarks of Secretary Dan Glickman," International Grains Council (June 19, 1997), Release No. 0196.97.
29 Ian Elliott, "Confusion continues around GMO labeling," FEEDSTUFFS, July 28, 1997.
30 "International Harmonization of Food Safety and Labeling Standards: Threats and Opportunities for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture" (Washington, DC: Center for Science in the Public Interest, June 1997); "Equivalence," Community Nutrition Institute memorandum (Washington, DC, October 10, 1996), and "The Politics of the Codex Alimentarius," Community Nutrition Institute (excerpts from "This is Codex Alimentarius," Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, 1995).
31 On June 18, 1997 Ambassador Barchefsky told the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee that any EU attempt to segregate GMOs or label them in such a way that the U.S. judged would restrict U.S. exports, would result in a WTO dispute resolution panel, "at a minimum, at a minimum" (sic) ("Barchefsky Warns EU of Trade War Over Genetically Modified Products," INSIDE U.S. TRADE, June 20, 1997). Forced by the threat of an all-out U.S. trade war, the European Union had approved in 1996 the importing of genetically altered corn and soya seeds and food products made with those seeds, and on July 23, 1997 the European Commission formally decided against mandatory segregation of GMOs from non-GMOs in commodities shipping and processing. ("EU Commission Formally Decides Against Mandatory Segregation of GMOs," INSIDE U.S. TRADE, August 1, 1997). Having conquered the European Commission, it would seem that the only battle left is the one being planned in international public relations firms and such agribusiness-government fora as the 9-10 October 1997 seminar of the International Policy Council on Agriculture, Food and Trade to conquer the hearts of minds of European consumers. (IPC Agro-Forum, http://www.agritrade.org or fax: (1-202-328-5133) If the U.S. and transnational agribusiness can succeed in eliminating consumer choice by making GMO labeling WTO-sanctionable, consumers and then presumably EU consumers will be forced to swallow GMOs unless they consume organically grown and processed commodities.
32 "Background Notes, U.S. Approach to Global Food Security," U.S. Information Agency, April 3, 1997.
33 "Micek tells senators development in Africa hinges on agriculture," MILLING AND BAKING NEWS, August 12, 1997.
34 "Hearing: U.S. Trade with Sub-Saharan Africa: Subcommittee on Trade, Committee on Ways and Means of the U.S. House of Representatives," The Washington Office on Africa, July 16, 1997.
35 John Mugabe et al., Biopolítica Internacional: El Manjejo del Acceso a los Recursos Geneticos: hacia estrategias de distribucion de beneficios (Nairobi: African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), 1996).
36 David Hathaway, "Biodiversity, Biotechnology and Patents in Brazil," written for the project "North-South Perspective on Sustainability" (September 1996), 2.
37 "Quad Ministers Calls on Advanced LDCs to Take on New Obligations," and "Quad Meeting Final Statement," INSIDE U.S. TRADE, October 1, 1996).
38 Chakravarthi Raghavan, Recolonization: GATT, the Uruguay Round & the Third World (Zed Books and Third World Network, 1990), 109.
39 Raghavan, "U.S. wants others to give up needs test in banking," THIRD WORLD ECONOMICS, 1-15, 1997, 10-11.
40 "EEUU amenaza con sanciones," DIARIO HOY (Quito, Ecuador),19 May 1997 and "Luz verde para embajador," DIARIO HOY, 26 July, 1997.
41 "U.S. listing of goods to lose GSP benefits spurs anger in Argentina," INSIDE U.S. TRADE, April 18, 1997.
42 Mario Gonzales, "U.S. Patent Agreement on Virtual Hold," InterPress Service, May 28, 1997.
43 "Biodiversidad y El CPPI," U.S. Embassy to Ecuador (?). Our letter sent to the Embassy to determine the authenticity of the document, unsigned and printed without Embassy letterhead, has gone unanswered.
44 Convention on Biological Diversity, United Nations Environment Programme (Interim Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity: Switzerland, 1994).
45 Camila Montesinos, "Sui Generis - A Dead End Alley," SEEDLING (Barcelona, December 1996), 19.
46 Juan A. de Castro, "The Biotrade Initiative: Making Biodiversity Work As A Tool For Conservation And Sustainable Development," paper presented at the Workshop on Transboundary Movement of Living Modified Organism Resulting from Modern Biotechnology: issues and opportunities for policy makers, 19-20 July 1996, Aarhus, Denmark.
47 Ed. Solomon Tilahun and Sue Edwards, The Movement for Collective Intellectual Rights, Institute for Sustainable Development: Addis Ababa/ The Gaia Foundation: London, 1996.
48 Gurdial Singh Nijar, "In Defence of Local Community Knowledge and Biodiversity: A Conceptual Framework and Essential Elements of a Rights Regime", in Tilahun and Edwards, op. cit., 91.
49 E.g. Vandana Shiva et al., "Biodiversity Related Community Intellectual Rights: Towards a sui generis System (The Model Biodiversity Related Community Intellectual Rights Act)," Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, New Delhi, 1997.
50 R. Barbault et al., "Generation, maintenance and loss of biodiversity," in Global Biodiversity Assessment, ed. V.H. Heywood, United Nations Environmental Program, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 193-274.
51 Op. cit. 198.
52 Ann Thayer, "Betting the Transgenic Farm," C & EN, 18 April 1997, 17.
53 For more on the paradox of the need for a de jure private character of CIRs in order to protect the de facto use of CIRs in the public domains of indigenous and farm communities, see "Policy, Strategies and Actions Concerning Collective Rights: A Document for Discussion," Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, August 13, 1997.